


Radioactive

by Alliemackenzie28, MedicBaymax



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 12:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliemackenzie28/pseuds/Alliemackenzie28, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicBaymax/pseuds/MedicBaymax
Summary: The only acceptable time to get a bullet out in the field...A whumpy RP'd re-work of MacGyver S2E17 "Bear Trap + Mob Boss"





	Radioactive

Mac crouched behind one of the disabled trucks as the bullets started flying. He would have thought that these goons would have had the good sense to conserve their ammo while in a garage full of barrels of radioactive waste, but hey, they'd also decided to set up shop in a place with known high levels of radiation, so maybe that was asking a lot of them. 

He signaled to Jack, who had already jumped into the one working truck with Riley. The building's one exit large enough for the vehicle to pass through was between him and Jack. He just needed to cover about 20 yards of open garage to meet Jack. If he timed it right, Jack wouldn't even have to slow down. 

Mac tried not to think of the odds of catching a bullet in this type of environment. So far, the bullets were much more directed at Jack than him, but if he started moving he would suddenly become a lot more interesting... Mac steeled himself. There were stacks of 55gal drums filled with radioactive waste materials piled throughout the garage. Taking cover behind them would hide him, he figured, but unless the drums were solid metal, they wouldn't be shielding him from bullets. 

Jack's truck was already rolling towards the exit. He didn't have a lot more time. 

Mac gritted his teeth and made a run for it. His Ukrainian was a little rusty, but the shouts that accompanied his movement had to be for his benefit as the shooters turned their attention to him. Bullets hit the wall behind him, impacting the brick hard enough to send little clouds of brick dust into the air. 

Thwong! He felt spray on his shirt as the 55gal in front of him took two bullets through and through. He kept going, making it to the pile closest to where he'd intercept the truck and jump in the back as it rolled by. 

Except as soon as he made it there, another volley of bullets hit the drums, and this time, he wasn't so lucky. He felt something hit his side, followed less than a second later by a considerable amount of sudden pain. He forced himself not to drop out of instinct. Tears welled up in his eyes and he allowed himself to vent some of the pain into a brief shout. The truck was rolling up. He didn't have time to assess the wound, but the fact that he was still upright probably meant it hadn't hit anything immediately vital. 

He managed, with great effort, to throw himself into the back of the truck, and pounded on the passenger compartment.

"Drive, Jack! Drive!" He shouted, gasping, then let himself fall to the truck's bed, curled around his injured side.

Mac dodged bullets and barrels all the way to the truck. From Jack's perspective, it was pure luck that prevented him from taking several bullets in the rain of gunfire that followed him. He heard Mac cry out, and although he tried to convince himself that his partner had just had a close call, the reality was that Jack knew what had happened immediately. There was nothing he could do but drive, so he did as Mac asked and sped off down the bumpy road.

Mac held as tightly as he could to the handholds in the back of the truck, as much to brace himself against the pain as to keep him physically in the vehicle. 

The drive seemed to go on forever. In the dark and with all the movement, it would be difficult to really examine the wound, so he focused on holding tight and tried to make himself concentrate on figuring out how to survive the mess instead of the fact that he was shot and it hurt and he couldn’t give a solid answer to “how much?” For either thing.

After what felt like an eternity, the truck bumped to a halt. Mac lay still for a moment, breathing heavily and gripping the handholds.

Jack pulled off the pavement onto a bit of level grass and jumped out, leaving his door open and the old engine chugging away. "Riley, drive," he commanded. He still had his backpack with its small first aid kit and a few other essentials. How the backpack, along with his team, had made it through this mess in one piece, he had no idea. Now he just had to make sure Mac *stayed* in one piece. 

He threw his pack up and scrambled up after it. There was very little light in the back of the truck, so he dug into the pack's side pocket for his headlamp, toggling it on as he slid it down over his forehead. Mac sat on the floor, clinging to the handrail, hunched around his bleeding side. "Aw, Mac... How you doing?" A chemical smell wrinkled Jack's nose. Might be the truck, but it also might be from the wet spots on Mac's shirt. Before touching him, Jack put on two layers of dusty white vinyl gloves that made the backs of his hands itch but would also offer some protection from whatever had splashed on Mac. "Can you sit up some so I can untuck your shirt?"

“Aww Mac... how you doing?” Mac registered Jack jump up on the truck bed to check on him. He didn’t think anything of it until Jack got close, then remembered he was covered in radioactive goo.

“Jack stop!” He said, bringing a bloody hand up to reinforce that Jack shouldn’t come any closer. He was still panting slightly, and his side absolutely screamed with the movement, but Jack didn’t need to be dragged into this. “I was exposed, don’t touch me!”

"Don't be stupid, Mac! I'm covered up, and I'll be careful. We have to get that stuff off you. Besides, I think I'm pretty good and exposed already." He gently pushed Mac's hand aside and went for his buttons. "We gotta stop somewhere and scrub down anyways before we exfil. Might as well start now." He clicked on his earpiece with his clean hand. "Riley, how far are we from that hangar?" 

Her reply came a moment later. "15, 20 minutes tops."

“Yeah Jack... but you didn’t get sprayed with that...stuff.” Mac closed his eyes hard, gritting his teeth against pain again. He had to stop moving so much or this wasn’t going to end well. In the light of Jack’s headlamp his blood-covered hands looked pretty bad.

He ventured a look at his side and was surprised to see blood had soaked down the whole side of his shirt, enough that it glistened. He’d thought it was a graze somehow, but with a sinking feeling he realized he was in a much bigger heap of trouble.

His hands were shaking. He swallowed, suddenly dizzy. “Let me try... first.” He grimaced. He let himself lay as flat as he could manage in the truck bed, then untucked the front of his shirt and pulled it up. “How bad?” He asked.

Mac's blood covered his hands and the bottom of his shirt, and was soaking into the waistband of his pants. Mac himself was panting and trembling as he lay on the dirty wooden truckbed. Dark blood trickled from the small hole in Mac's belly just below his ribs every time he moved, running down his side in a thin stream. "Will you just let me help you already!" Jack went for Mac's shirt again. "You're not bleeding that much, it's not that much blood. Not gonna kill you. That stuff's probably already burning you though, so lemme get it off you!"

“Good” Mac said. He wasn’t sure he totally trusted Jack’s medical opinion, but he liked hearing it wasn’t as much blood as he thought. And he didn’t want Jack to get exposed too. That didn’t need to happen if it didn’t need to happen.

But it did need to happen, Mac finally conceded. He wasn’t going to be able to get the shirt off himself without a lot more time and effort. He wasn’t sure how bad the exposure was yet, but the sooner the shirt came off, the less total radiation he would receive. “Okay just... don’t get any on you”

"Thank you," Jack breathed. He undid the first two buttons, but the third one kept getting caught on his gloves. He kept picturing the radiation seeping from that stain i to Mac's body, frying his organs, shriveling his cells, and in the end, he got frustrated and just ripped the shirt open, sending buttons plinking to the floor. Avoiding the gunk as much as possible, Jack helped Mac out of one arm and then the other. He balled up the shirt inside out and chucked it into the far corner, along with the outer layer of gloves. The first aid kit wasn't much, but it also wasn't off-the-shelf, so it was more than just bandaids. Jack ripped open an Israeli dressing and held the pad firmly to Mac's side.

Mac tried hard not to cry out as Jack pressed the bandage to his side. He could feel something move in his flesh- it was deep, but there. His mouth was dry and spots were taking over his vision.

He let himself lay still for a moment, knowing it would probably freak Jack out, but it was better to be conscious and freaking Jack out than unconscious and doing the same. 

It didn’t take too long to recover some. Out of the shirt and with drying blood across his torso, he was shivering in the chilly Ukrainian night. “Think.. I think... the bullet’s still in there, Jack.” He said.

"I know, buddy," Jack sighed. He also knew that he'd have to take the bullet out since it had gone through a barrel of who knew what kind of chemically, radioactive sludge. The truck slowed, turned, stopped. The driver's door slammed, and a moment later Riley's face appeared at the back of the truck. "We're here," she said. Jack looked down at Mac, who was pale and shaking. "Go unlock, get yourself scrubbed down. I'll need your help to decon Mac." It made Jack almost nauseaus to think of causing Mac more pain, but they needed to work quickly. He pulled the younger man upright and reached under his arms to grip around his chest, then dragged him to the edge of the truck bed. He guided Mac's hand to the railing. "Sit there for a second." Jack jumped the two feet to the ground and held his hands up for Mac. "Just slide on down. I gotcha. There ya go."

Jack pulled him to his feet. He was gentle about it, at least as gentle as Jack could be, but with the fresh wound in his side, Mac couldn’t help but cry out this time. 

He quickly stifled it and willed himself not to faint. Gingerly, he let Jack lead him to the edge of the truck and sit, his legs dangling over the side. His hands balled into fists, he managed to let himself slide over the side. 

His feet hitting the ground below sent a fresh wave of pain through his torso. His legs buckled underneath him.

Jack caught Mac under one arm as he fell and held him tight to his chest as the injured man regained his feet. It was awful to watch Mac struggle against the pain without saying a word. Jack made up his mind to bother the Phoenix medical staff about putting morphine in the first aid kits. As they walked the few feet to the hangar door, Jack supported most of Mac's weight, one shoulder under Mac's arm, and his hand wrapped tightly in the blood-soaked waistband of his pants. He could feel the other man trembling against his side. From cold or shock, he wondered. Did it matter? 

The inside of the hangar was just as cold as the outside, but they managed to make it. Riley had gone ahead inside as a scout. She met them at the door. “All clear.” She reported, then, noticing Mac- "Jeez, Mac!" She rushed over to them and tucked herself under Mac's other arm. 

Mac was leaning harder on Jack than he wanted to, oddly unable to get his balance right. It was freezing in the hangar, and largely dark, but Riley approached them with a compact lantern that threw a weak light around the concrete and metal room. Riley approached him and he almost pushed her away. “Don’t touch me yet.” Mac ordered as commandingly as he could while still panting slightly. “If you didn’t get anything on you yet, try to keep it that way.” As much as he hated to admit it, medically Riley had a lot more to lose from radiation poisoning than Jack did. 

Mac managed to get seated on an old wooden office chair backed up against the steel wall of the hangar. Next to it was a bucket and pile of what looked like old soviet uniforms. Mac shuddered, both at the continued cold and pain and at the history that lay at his feet. The setup might get some of the radioactive material off him, but it wouldn’t completely decon him. “Riley, were you able to get ahold of Phoenix?” Mac asked, shakily reaching down to the bucket.

Riley’s eyes flicked up to Jack’s when Mac told her not to touch him, and Jack nodded in confirmation. Jack lowered Mac into the chair as gently as he could and squatted next to him. Riley sat down in another creaky office chair a few feet away. “Yeah, it’ll be ten hours till they get here, so I guess we’re on our own till then. I have a chili mac MRE,” she said enticingly. “I’m gonna start mine heating up. Do you guys want some? We have….” she dug in her pack, “Chili mac, ooh, asian beef strips with veggies. That’s the one with the rice, isn’t it? And, oh. Sloppy Joe.” She shivered in disgust.

“What, you don’t like the sloppy joe one? That’s the best one! It’s got the corn and the hot beverage! Heat me up that sloppy joe,” said Jack. He tore off the sleeve of one of the old uniforms and plunged it into the water. “Let’s do your top half first so you can keep your pants on for another couple minutes.” The water in the bucket was freezing, but Jack knew he had to wash Mac down or the radioactive particles on his skin would continue to poison him. Better to be cold now than dead later.

Not that he'd ever been a particular fan of MREs, but for some reason the idea of eating anything, let alone something that had been prepared for the last 6 months, was not something that sat well with him. "I'm good." He said, waving away the offer of food.

The fact that they had MREs packed made him hopeful. Maybe someone had thought to pack the good first aid kit too. "We didn't bring the kit that had potassium iodide or DPTA in it, did we?" He asked, trying to assist Jack with the washing as much as he could bear. Being around Chernobyl was one thing, but depending on what material had gotten on him, he could be very seriously contaminated. If they had the drugs that could reduce his overall exposure, he needed them as soon as possible. 

Jack had to admit he wasn’t surprised that Mac wasn’t hungry. He’d have to get something in him though, or he’d burn right through all his energy reserves. His partner was already shaking from the pain and the cold. Jack did his best to go quickly with the scrubbing, but it just took time. After he’d washed and rinsed Mac, he did the same for himself, being especially diligent around his important bits. 

“Yeah, we have emergency exposure kits,” said Riley, tossing over two packets. Jack looked at them, holding one away from himself so he could read the small typeface. It was dark, ok?

“Let’s see, how do we do this?”

(A/N: I originally suggested KI and DPTA because other anti-radiation drugs like prussian blue and calcium/aluminum phosphate would be easier to, um, macgyver if they didn’t bring the kit. The RP did not end up going that way, and i failed to do the research on these drugs. In real life, DPTA can be given IV or via nebulizer, not by pill (but would likely be the best option, given that it works on plutonium, which was mentioned directly in the episode). KI comes as a pill or oral liquid). 

“I gotta take them... within an hour of exposure.” Mac said, grimacing as he looked at his side. He was probably getting close to the edge of that window, but he could take pills quickly, that wasn’t too big of a problem. “Should have already been measured to the right dose. Just need some water.” 

But there was something more pressing. The potassium iodide would shield his thyroid, but it wasn’t effective for anything else. The dtpa was a little more effective, especially since there was no way to tell what radioactive material he’d been exposed to exactly, but even it couldn’t do much if he couldn’t get decontaminated. 

And while he’d been washed about as best he could be, the bullet in his side had come into contact with radioactive waste immediately before entering. The only way to get decontaminated was to get the bullet out. If he couldn’t, depending on how severely contaminated the bullet was, there would be no way to medically mitigate the radiation’s effect on his body.

Jack handed two pills and a water bottle to Mac, then swallowed his own. They were both dressed in their spare clothes now, but Jack was cold. The doors of the hangar were all shut, but the ceiling was high and the freezing Ukranian wind whistled through the cracks, making the inside nearly as cold as the outside. Maybe if they all went in the truck and took the MRE heaters with them…

“Ok, Mac. Let’s get in the truck and see if we can warm up some.”

Riley took a bite of her peanut buttery bread. “What about the bullet? We don't know how long it was in that headquarters. If it's contaminated, those pills aren’t gonna cut it.”

Mac stopped. "The bullet... went through one of the drums. I don't know what was in it but I know it wasn't good." He paused. He hadn't meant to keep the information from them this long, but there had been a lot going on. Already he could tell they would come to the same conclusion he had- the bullet had to come out long before the tac team would get there. Which meant surgery. While he had long entertained the concept of one day possibly needing to undergo a painful medical procedure while conscious and in an extremely austere environment, with the pain he was already in, the idea of purposely making it worse was not a pleasant thought. 

Jack's eyebrows shot up at Mac's words. They'd have to remove the bullet. Mac looked like a scared kid, sitting there hunched over on the creaky wooden office chair, shivering in the baggy clothes they'd brought to change into. Jack was very much not equipped to do field surgery, but what choice did they have? Like the particulate on their skin, if they didn't remove it, it would keep leaking radiation into Mac's body. "I guess I'll wait on that sloppy joe," Jack said grimly. "Let's set up in the back of the truck. Riley, could you hang whatever lights we have from the roof? Mac, you hang tight. I'll come get you when I've got a bed laid out for you." He laid a hand on Mac's shoulder for a moment before walking away. 

They ended up with a decent setup. Jack and Riley each wore a headlamp, and three more hung from the cross bars that made up the ceiling of the truck, along with both of their solar lanterns. The operating table, such as it was, was made out of three packing crates lined up with a sleeping pad over them. On top of that lay Jack's sleeping bag, which he planned to unzip only enough to access Mac's side, leaving the rest of his patient covered and protected from the cold. The inside of the bag was lined with trash bags to prevent it from getting too bloody- not because Jack particularly cared about the bag, but because it wouldn't keep Mac as warm if it got wet. Jack hopped down from the back of the truck. "Ok, Mac. Ready?"

In enough pain, people broke their own teeth, their own fingers, ripped their own hair out and bit their own flesh to bone. Mac had done as best he could to control for these possibilities. He was tired and worried, and that would already make the pain worse, so he had to plan for not knowing exactly how he would react to someone digging around in his side for the bullet. There had been a canvas belt hanging on the wall and he'd had Jack soak it in water and place it between his teeth. Then he'd balled up some of the trash bags and closed his hands tightly around them. That would give him some room to squeeze without breaking anything. He supposed he could have tied himself down too, but on top of the anxiety he was already experiencing, that seemed worse than what it would do for him.

Tucked into the sleeping bag and almost warm, Mac tried to think of other things. "Go ahead." He said uneasily.

Jack was nervous, but he reminded himself that this was way worse for Mac. He would have given anything to be able to switch places with his partner, to take away his pain and be the one lying on the makeshift bed instead. Wishes wouldn't help Mac though, so Jack took the gloves Riley was holding out for him and put them on, wrinkling his nose under the itchy mask he wore to keep from breathing in Mac's wound. He placed one gloved hand flat on Mac's sterilized belly, the place where they guessed the bullet was cradled between his thumb and forefinger. Gently, he pressed down, making the bullet stand out a little through the layers of skin and fat. He felt detached from his hands as he watched his blue-gloved fingers approach Mac's side with the scalpel. The blade pushed into the skin and sliced an inch-long gash, releasing a trickle of blood, and Jack grew instantly nauseous at the sight of his friend's dark red muscle. No. Not his friend, he told himself firmly. This was his patient, a fellow soldier, wounded in the field, who needed his help. Steadied, Jack glanced up at Mac's face but didn't really register his expression. He squeezed his thumb and forefinger together to stabilize the bullet, took a deep breath, and sunk his fingers into the wound.

Mac tried not to move, he really did. He tensed himself before Jack made the first cut, but forced himself to relax. Jack would have to cut through muscle and that experience would only be worse if he was tense. The pain was stronger, deeper, and sharper than he expected, a completely different quality than the bullet alone had cuased. He'd been hurt before, but it was different getting hit with a bullet or slashed with a knife- in those cases the damage was usually done before he even knew what happened. The pain was out of his control.

This, here, was well within his ability to roll away from. If he screamed for Jack to stop, he knew Jack would. So he didn't scream.... ish. He allowed some sound to escape him, trying to stop himself from bucking Jack away for the pain he was causing. He forced himself to bite as hard as he could, to ball his fists as tight as they would go to give him something else to ground out the panicked desire to get the hell off that table.

Mac was shaking, and not from the cold. He was trying so hard to hold himself still, and Jack didn't dare glance up at his face, knowing he'd only see pain there. His fingers slipped past muscle and fat, finally brushing against the sharp hardness of the bullet. It had flattened out a little, giving it some rough edges that were surprisingly easy to grip. Doing his best not to cut Mac any more than he already was, Jack slowly extracted his fingers from the wound. There it was. The tiny piece of metal that threatened his partner's life. He pulled his glove off and tugged the other glove over it, enclosing the bullet and the blood in a neat package. Then hot saliva filled his mouth, and he jumped out of the truck and puked right on the floor. 

Fortunately, there wasn't much to bring up. He was glad he'd waited on the MRE, cause sloppy joe- yeah. He was just glad he'd waited. Riley didn't follow him, choosing to stay with Mac. Good. Jack grabbed his water bottle from his backpack and rinsed his mouth before climbing back into the truck, lowering the flap behind him. He took off his headlamp and looked down at Mac, who was pale and breathless but alive. Jack sat down next to him. "You ok, Mac?"

The second Jack jumped out of the truck, Mac's shaking hands scrabbled at the wound on his side. He cupped it, feeling the blood oozing from the fresh wound Jack had created. The pain was still intense enough that he had trouble putting together what had to happen next, but he noticed Riley was still there and recognized that the job wasn't yet over.

"Gotta... flush it, clean it. Get all the radioactive... stuff out." He managed, knowing flushing it would make the pain worse again.

Riley winced at Jack’s swift retreat. He’d turned green, then white, halfway through, and honestly she was surprised he’d made it as long as he had. She didn’t normally have a problem with blood, but this was so up close and immediate. Plus it was Mac, which made it so much worse than it would have been with almost anyone else.

She got a bottle of water out of her pack and punched a hole in the top like Mac had showed her. Bracing herself, she gently grasped Mac’s hand and pulled his cold fingers away from the wound. She wanted to apologize, but it wouldn’t do any good, so she just squeezed the bottle and Man’s hand, and said nothing.

Mac's eyes were closed so tight that when he opened them, he saw stars. Riley pulled his hand away from the wound. The pain was still bad, but lightheadedness and nausea were beginning to vie for his attention. Mac tried to go easy on Riley's hand, but he wasn't sure he succeeded. The water burned sharply on his exposed muscle. But it was getting the radioactive particles out of him... He had to let it happen.

The stars weren't clearing from his vision. He made himself lay completely flat, unable to spare the energy necessary to warn Riley. That in itself made his side feel like it was ripping, but if he could stop himself from passing out, that would be great. 

Jack rinsed his mouth one last time and spit on the floor. From the outside, the lit truck looked surprisingly cosy. It was already noticibly colder outside the truck than inside. He climbed back in and sat next to Mac. 

Riley had just finished rinsing the wound, and Mac lay limply on the cot, panting and pale. His eyes looked glassy and far away. Jack took his hand. “Mac, you with me? Mac?”

Even after laying flat for several seconds and letting blood back into his brain, Mac still could only manage a brief "mmhm." He would be. He was still riding out the combination of pain, seeing his own blood, and vagal-ing that was taking its toll. Exhaustion washed over him and he just wanted to sleep.

Mac’s eyes slid shut. Jack layed the unconscious man’s hand across his belly and looked up at Riley, who met his eyes with a worried look. “Oh, he’ll be alright. He always is. What we gotta do now is keep him from getting cold. He doesn’t have the strength to warm himself back up, so we gotta make sure he doesn’t get cold in the first place. Help me dry him off, and then we’ll get him in a couple sleeping bags.”

Together, they patted Mac’s side dry with a camp towel and a bandana. Then Jack rolled Mac toward him and held him while Riley pulled the trashbags out from under him. They’d worked well, and there were only a few drops of water on the sleeping bag. Jack gently rolled Mac onto his back and placed his hands over his stomach, then zipped up the sleeping bag around him. Riley climbed into her sleeping bag on the floor and Jack did the same on the other side of Mac, and they slept.

He hadn't thought he'd passed out, or if he had, he was sure it hadn't been long. But the fact that he was now dry, not covered in plastic, and in the sleeping bag begged to differ.

Also, it was light out, and dew covered the sleeping bag. He swallowed slowly, moving his head slightly to see Jack asleep on the floor of the truck. The events of the previous night came back to him in a weird sort of haze. Jack had... removed a bullet from his side... in the back of this truck. Ow. Mac shook his head to clear it of the memory, only to have his side protest painfully. Okay, moving would be sketchy.

As gently as he could, he lifted up the sleeping bag, trying to get a look at the wound. Someone had covered it after Riley finished flushing it out, but it didn't have the tightness he would have expected had they closed it. He'd need to pack it if they were going to be spending any more time here...

His train of thought was cut off by a crackle of static. At first he was alarmed- there were bound to still be bad guys in the area. If they got to him, he had no way of defending himself, or Jack or Riley. He calmed, seeing Jack shift in his sleep. He was curled around the radio. "Jack?" He whispered urgently.

"Mac?!" Jack jolted out of a light sleep. He hadn't slept well that night, since he'd woken up about every half hour to check on Mac. His partner hadn't woken up when he'd changed the soaked bandage, or when he'd thrown his own sleeping bag over him in the early morning hours. Jack heard the radio buzz and picked it up. 

"Blueberry, this is Black Bear, please respond." 

"Black Bear, this is Blueberry. Good copy. ETA?"

"ETA to LZ is 30 minutes."

"Copy that, Black Bear. We'll be there!"

Jack smiled at Mac, and over at Riley, who was rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Morning, sunshines! Think you can walk to the LZ if we help you?"

Mac wasn't sure he could walk out, but he was definitely sure he didn't exactly have a choice. They drove as far as they could, the last quarter mile to the LZ was thick brush and trees the truck wasn't equipped to handle. Slowly, painfully, leaning heavily on Jack, Mac made his way to the clearing where the chopper would send down a litter.

He let himself sit down against a tree. His side was so weak he could barely keep himself upright even with Jack's help. Minutes after they arrived, Mac heard the sound of chopper blades in the air, and minutes after that, wind whipped the cold morning air into the sweat on his face. There was a sense of finality to it even though the day was far from over. He was still a chopper ride from an initial medical evaluation and some treatment, then transfer to a US-based hospital for more definitive care and after that the debriefing process and... well, it would be a long next few days even without him being unable to stand upright unassisted. 

He let Jack help him into a litter and allowed himself to be hoisted up into the cabin.


End file.
